Horoscope
by TheVulpineHero1
Summary: Twelve bites of everyday life, based on horoscopes  taken 29/1/2011 . Tails centric.
1. Aries

_All horoscopes taken from http : / www . horoscopes . co . uk /_

_Aries_

_You could so easily lose the financial plot. Cost-wise nothing may be as it seems. The upside is that you could find exactly the right outfit whilst shopping. Green might not normally be your colour, but the colours of the sea - (or is it seaside?) could attract you. Involvement in a charity or helping out a friend who's not 100% seems likely.

* * *

_

"Sonic...You know that's a bad idea", he said reproachfully as his hedgehog friend wolfed down yet another candy-coated snack.

"Oh, chill out," was the reply.

The sun shone weakly over the harbour, the rays skipping across the sea like stones across a pond and splashing great waves of orange and red over everything. It was beautiful, but somehow haunting, and Tails was starting to think it was a bad idea to keep hanging around.

"Aw, man...Why does cotton candy have to be so tasty? Now I don't have enough to get Amy a gift!"

Tails smiled knowingly. By 'gift', what he really meant was 'inexpensive piece of tat which Amy will love anyway but which also serves the purpose of making sure she's not horrifically violent the next time I see her'.

"Well, I _would_ help you out, but I spent most of my money on the boat ride."

"Ugh. Had to be a boat ride, didn't it? I got bored waiting by myself. I can't believe you offered to tune up the engine, though- I can't take you _anywhere_."

They shared a grin, the grin of friends who were pretending to hate the very qualities in a person that they appreciated most.

"So," Sonic asked mock-seriously, "What should I do about Amy? I'm not going back to hospital again."

"Iunno. Buy her a pirate sword and ask her to steal your heart?"

" You know, that's just stupid enough that it might work. Who are you, and what have you done with Tails?" the hedgehog joked, punching him in the arm and breaking into a run. Tails followed, the sun over the water bringing back a thousand memories of times just like this, when each step had been one step closer to saving the world.


	2. Taurus

_Taurus_

_You could effect great change - and possibly coerce others into giving for a cause. Charity themes could operate in other ways too: you could find something perfect to wear whilst browsing in a charity store. Books too could have singular impact. One that's recommended by a friend with an unusual sense of humour could give you a decided lift.

* * *

_

The door is open when he arrives. Immediately, a bolt of pure misgiving runs down his spine and settles in the tips of his tails. It could only mean one thing: that Amy Rose had been burgled, or that Amy Rose was Boxercising. Truthfully, he couldn't decide which was worse.

Looking vainly for a way to pass through the open door without feeling like a criminal, he presses the doorbell, and winces when it chimes the chorus of a popular sappy song. Almost immediately, Cream rushes to the open door, decked out in her Riders gear and soaked with sweat.

"Tails! I'm so glad you're here! Could you, um, please give me a hand in calming Amy down?" she asks, voice jittery from all the exercise. He notices a few emerging bruises where Amy has been a little over-vigorous with her sparring. _Yup, definitely worse,_ he thinks, and steps inside.

Immediately, he sees why they had the door open. The place is like a sauna, and the hit heats him so hard he practically doubles over. Cream looks at him apologetically as he tries to catch his breath. Already, he can feel his fur starting to curl and frizz all over.

"Amy says you lose more weight when you sweat..." Cream explains. He looks at her in silent admiration. Firstly, she can stand the heat, and secondly, she hasn't frizzed into a giant puffball, as he's sure he will if he stays here more than five minutes. That takes guts.

"Oh! Hey...Tails! Didn't hear you...Come...In!" Amy's voice rings. Her sentence is interspersed with brief flurries of punching. Preparing himself for the worst, he goes to the voice, Cream trailing meekly behind him.

What he finds is a slap to the face of Science. It shouldn't be _physically possible_ for Amy to be standing up and still throwing punches in the middle of a puddle of her own sweat, but then again Amy has never let little things like truth or grade school biology stop her.

"Oh, hey, Amy. You know, I was just talking about you with Sonic the other day," he invents furiously. Someone needs to put a stop to this, if only so he can transfer Amy to a medical lab and find out why the heck she's still alive.

"Really?" She stops punching, and her ears visibly prick up. Always a good sign.

"Uh, yeah!" he says over-enthusiastically. _Come on, Tails. You're supposed to be smart! Why can;t you tell a decent lie for once?_ "We were, um, talking about taste in girls, and..."

"_Eeeeeeeeeeek!_" Amy screeches, and immediately grabs him into a bear hug Knuckles would be jealous of. The smell of sweat is making him faint.

"You must be here to pick up Cream, right?" she whispers in his ear. He throws an involuntary look back at the rabbit, and feels his face rearrange itself into an expression of helplessness.

"...What?" he asks timidly, not really wanting to learn the answer.

"Oh, pooh!" she says, dropping him. "I thought you were finally getting started on the path to love! Geez, and I was getting excited about having another couple to talk to..."

_Maybe all the sweat's making her delusional...Wish I had my medical dictionary,_ he thought, before returning to the task at hand.

"Uh, well, about that...Me and Sonic were talking, and he wanted to know, have you lost weight lately?"

"I sure have! Ten pounds! Would you believe it?" she giggled. Tails got the feeling that Cream had lost more, somehow.

"Well, uh, he sure has noticed!" He was interrupted by another bone breaking hug and a fit of screeching that set off more than a few burglar alarms.

"But, um,"he gasped, trying to get the words out whilst being throttled, "He was saying, he used to prefer it when you were bigger, y'know? He liked how his arm felt around your waist, or, or something like that..."

Once again, he was unceremoniously dropped. His fur was well and truly ruined. By the time he'd appraised the extent of the damage, Amy was pressing a wad of money into his hands.

"Take that. Go out, and get me two giant triple chocolate fudge milkshakes. Oh, and one for Cream, too," she hissed. He nodded mutely, and turned to leave.

In a fit of what could only be called temporary heat madness, he turned at the door, and called back, "And, um, Amy? You, uh, may wanna get a shower."

Before he could even think, a heavy book came sailing through the air and smashed into his forehead spine-first. In between groaning and clutching his new war-scar, he noticed the title: _Pink Is The Colour Of Love._ He considered making a comment about Amy's taste, but thought better of it.

"Thanks, Tails. I didn't know what to do..." Cream said to him as he walked to the door. "Um, I don't mean to be rude, but your fur..."

"Has expanded to twice its normal weight and volume, I know," he sighed. "Being a hero is tougher than it used to be."


	3. Gemini

_Gemini_

_Contact with people who're not well, who've perhaps failed a test or whose love-lives aren't quite as they'd hoped, is probable. They might need you to hear their fears. You might have a few of your own though: recent information could have been confusing. You may need to do something to take your mind off recent developments knowing that all won't be revealed for some days yet.

* * *

_

"Hey, Fox-Boy. Nice race," Wave said as he walked back to the pits. Usually, he would have thought it was some sort of sarcastic insult, but seeing as he'd come first and she'd come last, it struck him as unlikely.

"What happened out there? You're way off form," he said, shouldering his board.

"Why do you care? You won, didn't you?" she said acerbically. He winced under the tone.

"I know, but...It's not as exciting when I don't have you for competition," he said truthfully.

"Hah! Flattery'll get you nowhere in the racing world, you know. If you _really_ wanna know..." she whispered conspiratorially, "My Aunty Flo has come to town."

"Huh. Wave and Flow, huh? I guess that makes sense. It's a little weird, though...Amy has an Aunt Florence, too, but Amy says I can never meet her even though she's in town," he remarked.

She was silent for a few seconds, so he turned to look at her. Her lower lip was wobbling. Slowly, the tremors moved from her lower lip to her shoulders and suddenly, she burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" he asked, mildly offended without knowing why. She continued to giggle for a few moments, the laughter floating up and bursting like bubbles (with the occasional hiccup to accompany them), then tried to compose herself enough to give him an answer.

"Oh, fox-boy. You're a little more innocent than I gave you credit for. I feel a bit better after a good laugh. Thanks," she said, before lapsing back into uproarious laughter.

Quite confused and still a little offended, he made his excuses and left, leaving her still chuckling in the pits.

* * *

A few days later, he was explaining the incident to Knuckles, who had also noticed Wave's poor form.

"And then she just burst out laughing, for no reason. Did I do something wrong?" he asked sorrowfully.

"Uh, Tails? Y'do know what Auntie Flo actually _means_, right?" Knuckles asked. His face fell when the fox shook his head.

"Okay. Well, uh..." Knuckles said, and proceeded to give Tails the entire talk.

"Wait, so Wave was...Oh, man! Too much information!" the fox cringed.

"Hey, you think you got it bad? I lived a secluded life on a floating island. I had to find it out from _Amy_."

Tails shivered in sympathy, and decided to treat Wave a little more kindly in future.


	4. Cancer

_Cancer_

_Occasionally action by friends and close associates requires you to stop and think about joint financial management - which is what happens today. The cost of pleasure could be an issue. It may be that you're involved with a group who don't need to keep their eye on the same financial pulse as you do. Juggling Peter to pay Paul seems likely.

* * *

_

"Look, Knuckles. No. I can't," he said for the fiftieth time.

"Come on, Tails. All you need to do is go halves with me at the restaurant. I can't afford to eat otherwise," Knuckles pleaded.

To be honest, he wouldn't mind going out to eat for once. Although he could cook, his research meant that his microwave was starting to become his best friend, and one of the great disadvantages of having such a fine sense of smell was that he had a fine sense of taste to go with it. And forty-second hamburgers washed down with soup-in-a-mug wasn't exactly gourmet cuisine.

The problem was that he needed to save money to get one of the parts he needed. You could never predict an Eggman attack, after all, so he needed to be constantly updating his defences.

"Why don't you have money, anyway? Don't you usually sell stuff you dig up at the Chao Garden?" he asked.

"Well, I don't have money because I spent it all," Knuckles said slowly, as if he were explaining something painfully simple to an idiot. Not for the first time, Tails wished the echidna would have a brain aneurysm or something and wake up a savant.

"On _what?_ What could you possibly need, Knuckles?" he asked wearily.

"This! It's a burglar alarm. I got it from a door-to-door salesman," Knuckles said proudly, holding out a grey box that seemed to be made of melted down plastic cups. Instantly, he grew suspicious.

"Knuckles, who sold you that?"

"A door to door salesman, remember?" Knuckles said patronisingly. He seemed to have forgotten that he didn't actually _have_ a door. "He was a bat, I think. Wore an overcoat, and had a mustache."

Tails resisted the urge to put his head in his hands and cry.

"He told me it alerts the police if anyone comes. I said, awesome, that means I can go down to the Casino place on Saturday and win big."

Tails sighed. "Look, Knuckles. I'm going to explain the five major things that are wrong with that."

"There's nothing wrong with it," the echidna said, with the tell tale edge that signalled a rising temper. Tails ignored him.

"Number one, you live on an island with _one_ thing to steal. It would take about fifteen seconds to steal it, so the thief would get away long before the police arrived. Which they wouldn't, because number two, there are no police in Mystic Ruins _on account of them being ruins_. And number three, even if there were (and there aren't), that burglar alarm wouldn't alert them because it needs a phone line and you don't have one. Number four, you live on an island so you don't even have any _walls _to attach it to, and finally, number five, you did not buy it from a door to door salesman. You bought it from Rouge," he sighed.

"Wait. Rouge? Tails, Rouge doesn't have a mustache and this guy did," Knuckles protested.

"Rouge in a disguise, Knuckles, Rouge in a disguise," Tails almost wept in exasperation.

"I don't believe it," Knuckles said, folding his arms resolutely.

"Oh, and the alarm? It isn't an alarm," Tails continued, prying it open with no difficulty. "It is, in fact, a box with a rock inside it."

"So, wait...I got ripped!" Knuckles exploded.

"Yes, Knuckles, you got ripped," Tails confirmed wearily. "My advice? Go see if Sonic will go splits with you, and make sure you're at home on Saturday."

Saturday came and went. Tails spent the day quite happily perusing the parts catalogue and dreaming of all the things he could make. On Sunday, as he came downstairs and proceeded to put on a big pot of his super strength coffee, he found a letter on his doormat.

"_I'll get you for this, Fox-boy!_

_Signed, a Disgruntled Door To Door salesman"_

_Just another day in the life,_ he thought, and tried to find something non-explosive for breakfast.


	5. Leo

_Leo_

_It might seem that someone's been economical with the truth: it's as likely that you weren't listening properly. Resolving misunderstandings seems to be the big theme. That could apply whilst shopping: you could find what you think you want, only to wish to exchange it for another size (or something more practical) later. The words of someone who's always canny whilst shopping could haunt you!_

* * *

"Amy, no. I refuse. I'm not doing it," he whined, knowing already that his defeat was a forgone conclusion. He'd never been more embarrassed in his entire life, and that included all the times he'd been picked on before he met Sonic. It was mortifying.

This, of course, was the part where Amy morphed and became part ticking-time bomb, part stone-cold emotional sniper, gradually picking apart his resolve thread by metaphorical thread.

"Why not? It's not like you didn't know what you were getting into. I told you we were going shopping," she said.

"But not _what for_," he objected wearily. They were only at the first riposte and he was already tired.

"And besides, you're the only one I could have asked. Cream's busy helping Vanilla out around the house, and I can't track down any of the guys."

Looking back, that should have been a clue to him. If Sonic, Knuckles and Shadow couldn't be found, it usually meant that they'd fled, screaming, into the hills.

"Besides, Sonic did it. Why can't you?"

Yes, Sonic had done it. Once. He'd spent the next three weeks walking with a limp and jumping at small noises, and all because he hadn't _quite_ kept his mouth shut. When Tails had asked, all he'd said was, "Never go shopping with Amy." Advice he would have done well to have taken.

Seeing that the fox's flagging resolve was still standing, Amy frowned and reached for her most persuasive argument. One that happened to be large, heavy, and a hammer. He sighed. She hadn't managed to breach his emotions, so she'd appealed to his intelligence. And his intelligence said that the smartest thing to do was whatever the hell she told him. He groaned, shut his eyes, and took up the stack of offending articles. Really, it had just been a combination of three simple factors.

Not listening to good advice.

Lingerie shopping.

And 'Only One Item In The Changing Room At Any One Time.'


	6. Virgo

_Virgo_

_As the day wears on, you could give the impression of being an exotic butterfly: some people could find you hard to pin down. You might also appear to sparkle - particularly with bright ideas. A crowd could form: you might even find yourself at the centre of group activities. Rather less pleasant could be the discovery that a younger person has broken a piece of essential equipment. _

* * *

There was a reason he never invited anyone to stay at his house. And that was because it was connected to his laboratory, which was possibly the most dangerous place in the world (barring Amy's bedroom). So, when Vector barged in and said, wearing a crocodile smile that brooked no arguments, that he, Charmy and Espio were behind with the rent and needed somewhere to crash for a few days, Tails had a few...misgivings. However, after estimating the risk of accidental nuclear holocaust at a scant 13% (based on the off chance Team Chaotix were carrying some purified uranium as lucky charms or something), he decided it would be okay to let them stay, provided he moved all the more dangerous inventions out of the way first.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Admittedly, the problem lay in his own classification system. When he classified his inventions as 'dangerous', he only categorised their dangerousness according to function. This meant he left behind a few relatively benign novelty inventions, like the Sparkly Glittermatron he had originally intended to sell to Japan for their all their bisihie needs, and which had been eventually been relegated to making Cream's dolls sparkle every once in a while. Unfortunately, he had forgotten the Golden Rule: that when Team Chaotix was around, _everything _was dangerous.

As it turned out, within five minutes of them arriving, carnage broke out over who was bunking where and with whom. Espio, upon becoming embroiled in the argument, immediately ransacked Tails' lab of all the pointy and very expensive lab equipment he could find, and started tossing it with great abandon. Charmy decided that the only suitable response was to pick up the Sparkly Glittermatron and make a bombing raid on Vector. Luck, that ever fickle mistress, decided it would tickle her fancy for the machine to have a catastrophic malfunction upon hitting Vector's bonce, causing a massive, sparkly explosion.

The upshot of this was that Miles 'Tails' Prower became the proud owner of both the sparkliest home and the sparkliest lodgers he could ever desire. He was also, sadly, the owner of the sparkliest fur coat, and the odious task of going out in public and fetching the ingredients for the specialist shampoo which would restore it to its normal dullness.

Flying at supersonic speeds. Easier with a healthy tide of embarrassment to push you along.


	7. Libra

_Libra_

_Whilst analysing recent events, you might draw the conclusion that you've been led up a garden path. The truth could be more complicated: you may have heard what you wanted to hear. In the romance department this could have big implications. In another part of your life news about a younger friend - and where they're going to be living, could require adjustment to your schedule to take account of journey times._

* * *

There was no mistake about it. He'd been played like a fool.

At least it gave him the chance to check out Eggman's latest tech. He made a very good laser-net landmine trap. And the workmanship on his plasma-grid prisons was nothing short of meticulous.

"Tails?"

"Yes, Cream?"

"I'm sorry."

It figured. He'd gotten a letter, apparently from her, saying that she'd gone to live with her cousin, the Easter Bunny, and that he should come and visit. Obviously, he should have spotted the link between Easter and Eggman, but he was too busy being Mr. Cynical Scientist and preparing to capture evidence that the Easter Bunny was a fraud.

"It's no problem, Cream. We'll just have to wait for Sonic and Knuckles to rescue us. They always do," he said ruefully.

No less then half an hour afterwards, his prediction had been realised as two primary coloured wrecking balls tore through Eggman's base. Alarms went off, sirens screeched and if robots could feel pain then Tails was pretty sure Knuckles was going to be in trouble come the afterlife. It earned them a visit from the Good Doctor himself.

"Ah, Sonic! And Knuckles, too! What a surprise. I was just lecturing your little friends here on the existence of the Easter Bunny," the doctor cackled. Tails fought the growing urge to put his head in his hands and weep.

"Eggman!" Knuckles roared, immediately hurling himself onto the platform nearest the Doctor. "You won't escape this time!"

"Hey, cool it, Knuckles! You wanna go and get tra-"

It was too late. Knuckles had already pulled himself up onto the platform where Tails and Cream were being held. Groaning, Sonic followed. As soon as he'd hauled himself up and watched Tails try to explain that, _no, _it was _not_ a good idea to hit a plasma grid prison cage, Eggman pushed a button on his flying armchair and plasma bars shot up, too high to jump over, positioned all along the edges of the platform.

"So, how does it feel, my little friends, to be trapped in a cage within a cage? How delightful! Now I have _four_ of the Sonic Team under my command!"

Tails was about to set his brain into gear and figure out how he might disrupt a multi-million dollar piece of technology using nothing but his shoes and a grease rag, but Sonic shot him a wink. They'd planned for this.

"Hmph. Believe me, Eggman- shortly, you'll wish you were trapped in there with them."

The flash of green, unnoticed on the ledge behind Eggman, faded away to reveal Shadow, wearing a grin more at home on Hannibal Lector's face. The Doctor, very slowly and pitifully, began to cry.

It was a shame they'd been captured, Tails thought. But sometimes, there was nothing wrong with sitting back and watching the show.


	8. Scorpio

_Scorpio_

_Consciously or unconsciously, you may have left someone with misinformation - which could be as distressing to you as it is to them. A third person may need to intervene to iron out misunderstandings. You could also fall foul of incomplete information: a travel schedule could be changed or extra charges put in place. You could though find previously elusive vocabulary and make it clear to someone just how much you care for them. _

* * *

"_What do you **mean**_**, **_you gave Amy a love ray?"_

"Chill out, Sonic. It doesn't _work_. There's no way it could. I just had to do something to stop her wrecking my TV."

"_Look, that's still no-"_

"I'm sorry, Sonic, but do you know how long I've had this TV? All of three days. LCD screen with HD, too. I was gonna watch documentaries on it. I think after all I've done for the world, I deserve to watch a few documentaries."

"_Well, yeah, but-"_

"All you have to do is pretend that it _does _work. Just for a day. Then, I'll take it back in for testing, and it'll 'mysteriously' break. I get to keep my TV, Amy gets a date- everyone's happy!"

"_Sorry, Tails, but since when did **I** stop being a part of 'everyone'?"_

"Well, if you do it, you get dibs on the remote every time you come round. I know how funny you find the Olympics these days."

"_...Dang it! Fine, deal. But you owe me snacks too!"_

Sonic dropped the connection, and Tails breathed a sigh of relief. He'd paid a lot for that TV. But something was niggling in the back of his mind. Some hidden dange-

"Sonic! Sonic, are you there? Pick up the phone!"

"_Geez, Tails, I only just put it down. I'm waiting for Amy in Central Plaza."_

"Sonic, do _not_ get hit by the love ray! Repeat, do not get hit by the love ray!"

"_What? Why? I thought it didn't work?"_

"I just remembered. I put a Chaos Emerald in there, because who'd think to look for a Chaos Emerald in a love ray, and then I fiddled around a little bit and managed to get the ray reading on the positive energy in the Chaos Emera-"

"_Tails, just the essentials, please."_

"There's a small chance the Love Ray might _actually_ work, so you might wanna-"

There was a loud "A-Ha!" from the other end of the phone, and a strange, undulating sound. The line went dead. Panicking, he called Knuckles.

"_Hello, Tails?"_

"Knuckles, I need a shard from the Master Emerald. Really badly."

"_What? Why?"_

"Well, I kinda gave Amy a functioning love ray and she may have used it on Sonic. I need the Master Emerald to make an antidote laser."

"_Well, let me th- NO."_

"Come on, Knuckles!"

"_Are you kidding me? This is going to be hilarious. Wait until the media find out! He'll never live it down!"_

"That's why I need to make an antidote!"

"_No way. I think I'd prefer to sit back and laugh."_

"...Okay. Fine. I understand."

"_Sure you do. It'll be great."_

"Which is why when Rouge _inevitably_ asks to borrow it, I'm going to let her. And then _I'll_ sit back and laugh when you mount the Master Emerald in a ring and ask her to marry you."

"_...You'd better be joking."_

"I hear one of the side effects is that it makes you whipped. Wanna risk it?"

"_Grrraah! Fine. Be over in a bit. You'd better be working on that ray by the time I get over there."_

Tails put the phone down and sighed. Even _more_ work. He was going to watch Transformers and laugh at how ridiculously implausible their designs were.

He just hoped he managed to get the love ray back before Sonic did something really stupid. Because if it ever got on the news, he got the feeling he might need a new TV.


	9. Sagittarius

_Sagittarius_

_Double-checking facts might be wise. It could that you've prepared notes already. It's possible that parameters have changed and that you could lose points though. Checking on a route might be valuable also: traffic diversions could create havoc if you're unprepared. Someone who always tends to have their head in the clouds might this time astound you with their analysis of a situation. _

* * *

Failing to find anything constructive to do, Tails settled for smashing his head against the dashboard. That made his head hurt, but it alleviated the boredom, although it did nothing for the sheer heart-pumping, adrenaline-dripping wave of panic that was lapping against the fringes of his mind.

Traffic jams. They weren't exactly part of his normal day to day grind, but they existed nonetheless, and he was sitting in one. _Why_ he ever thought it would be a good idea to install a car mode into his plane escaped him. And he couldn't exactly turn plane or walker in the middle of the highway- he'd freak someone out, and they might go nuts and hit a kid. So, there he was and there he would remain, as the time until his appointment slowly counted down.

When he woke up, he'd expected it to be a normal day. He'd read the newspaper in leisure, and savoured every bite of the new brand of breakfast cereal he was trying. But then Sonic rang, and said those seven words that had sealed his fate.

"_What did you get for Amy's birthday?"_

Of all the dangerous things you could do, forgetting Amy's birthday ranked somewhere between swallowing purified uranium and asking Chuck Norris if he wanted to arm wrestle. In short, if he didn't find and deliver a suitable present by four o' clock that afternoon, he'd be giving Amy a brand new fox-fur pelt to strut around in. And, in his panic, he'd decided he probably couldn't be trusted to pilot an aeroplane without spiralling into the nearest beach, so he'd driven. Big mistake.

At least he could be thankful for two things. Firstly, the Tornado lacked a clock, so he couldn't count the seconds until his own demise. Secondly, Amy was relatively easy to shop for, if he ever got to the city. That wasn't much to go on, and traffic still wasn't moving, so he whiled another thirty seconds away smashing his head on the dashboard. Then, his phone rang. As he was seldom rung for anything other than bad news, he hesitated before setting it to speaker.

"_Hey, Tails,_" the voice piped. Charmy. _"I hear it's Amy's birthday. What're you getting her?"_

"A gravestone with my name on it," he deadpanned, and punctuated it with some more head-to-dashboard action.

"_So, wait. Lemme get this straight...You're stuck in traffic. Can't you, like, fly on your own? Just lock your car, man. Anything that hits it is gonna come off worse anyway,"_ Charmy suggested after he'd explained the situation.

"What, just leave a highly dangerous transforming robot plane lying around on the interstate highway?" he asked dubiously.

"_It's got your name on it, for goodness' sake. Only Eggman would try and steal it. Don't you have a tracker on it, anyway?"_

"Yeah, but...It'll reduce the resources available in case of a sudden Eggman strike if the Tornado is sitting out here in traffic," Tails said, chewing his lip.

"_If Amy kills you for not remembering her birthday, it'll reduce resources for defeating Eggman pretty much indefinitely. Dunno where we'd find another geeky robot building guy,"_ Charmy said seriously.

He hadn't thought about it that way.

After a clipped goodbye to Charmy (he really was running out of time), he whirred up his tails and took to the sky, shooting the Tornado a few forlorn looking glances as he went.

In the end, Amy didn't kill him. But the police wanted a stern word with him for parking in the middle of the highway and causing massive traffic jams.


	10. Capricorn

_Capricorn_

_It may be necessary to review the amount spend on a hobby - or to advise a group of friends that they're taking you into financial territory for which you're not yet prepared. Contact with someone in the healing profession could prove exceptionally useful - especially when they offer a tip that will save you both time, money - and probably a journey. _

* * *

"Look, guys. I'm gonna have to skip out," he says gently. If he had a hat, he'd be wringing it in his hands.

"Whaaaat? Come on, Tails! We spent so much time getting this organised! How long didya think it took us to contact Shadow, for goodness' sake?" Sonic whines. He's got a point, and that's what makes it annoying.

"Yeah. We all need a guys' night. Well, a guy's mid-afternoon, anyway. Builds comraderie for the next time Eggman decides to spring somethin' on us. It's a 'brothers in arms' kinda thing. With nachos," Knuckles says helpfully.

"...Hmph," Shadow said- or didn't say? Hard to tell. He didn't seem overly pleased to be there.

"I know, guys, but, I can't afford this stuff. Any of this stuff. I thought we'd be eating somewhere, I don't know, maybe a little more downmarket..." Tails carries on, hoping desperately they won't notice the flaw in his argument.

"Downmarket? Tails, this is as downmarket as we can get. They've practically got bar stools set out for the roaches," Knuckles quips. He's right. But that wasn't the reason Tails was trying to skip out. The real reason lay in a rare machine component and a misunderstanding about what 'food money' was meant to be used for.

"Leave him alone. If he doesn't wish to rub shoulders with you and the faker, then I don't blame him," Shadow says dangerously, his patience already reaching breaking point.

"S'not like he's tall enough to rub shoulders with me," Knuckles points out, and pats Tails on the head. Sonic just waves and goes back to reading the menu. It shouldn't take long. There are only five things on it.

"...In about five seconds, I intend to be fifty miles from this...squat. You may accompany me if you provide a decent excuse. I don't want to be talking about something this _ridiculous_ the next time Eggman invades," Shadow mutters to him darkly. With the smallest movement perceptible, he nods and begins his routine.

"Well, actually, guys, the real reason I didn't wanna come was...Well, I'm, uh, really ill, with, um, Kitsune's Disease, and I might, y'know, chuck up everywhere. In fact, I think I need to go to hospital," he says, punctuating it with a little cough at the end.

"Kitsune's Disease? Oh, I've heard of it- about two-thousand years ago in the annals of the Echidna tribe," Knuckles replies, and Tails' back squirms with the feeling of being caught out. "You're right, though- if you've got Kitsune's disease, you need hospital, and bad. You die in about four days, if I remember correctly."

"And it would be foolish to let our only scientist die to a disease when Eggman's still out there," Shadow breaks in, a dark smile playing around his mouth. "I'll take him. I wasn't planning on spending any time with my lookalike, anyway."

"You know, Knuckles," Sonic says seconds after the green flash of Chaos Control has died down, "I think we've been duped."

"Maybe," Knuckles admits. "I think Shadow was trying to pretend he was still a jerk, when really he's worried about the little guy."

"That wasn't _quite_ what I meant..."

A brief flash of Chaos Control later, they arrived in the hospital. He sniffs. The smell of chlorine and bleach is offensive to a highly tuned nose. It isn't usually this bad, though.

"Tails? And..._Shadow_?" a familiar voice says behind them.

After the initial shock of seeing Amy, Cream and a very, very irritated Rouge in nurse's uniforms ("What? We can't have a girl's day out? We were gonna go shopping, but Cream decided to help the community, and we weren't gonna leave her here all on her own!") they eventually got around to making excuses about why they left Sonic and Knuckles. Predictably, Shadow and Rouge took the opportunity to get out of dodge.

"Well, I just didn't have enough money. I'm living on noodles this week, I guess," he says sheepishly.

"Oh, Tails. How can you be a genius if you can't even budget?" Amy chides gently.

"Well, some people are willing to starve for their art," he sniffs.

"Machines aren't art."

"Let's not get into that argument again..."

"You know, Tails," Cream says seriously, "You could always out at the hospital. We're a hand down since Miss Rouge and Shadow left, and we get free lunches."

He grimaced. He thought he'd skipped over janitor work, having invented a floor which even the stickiest of scientific residues would wash off. Apparently not.

"You do know what this means, right, Tails?" Amy says with just a slight hint of menace. "I'm your superior. And, as a man, you should be the one who gets toilet duty. You're used to cleaning disgusting things off the floor, anyways."

He groans, and takes the rag Amy's offering to him. Next time, he'll skip on buying that new engine.


	11. Aquarius

_Aquarius_

_On the home front especially, change is in the air. At one level you may be trying to work out what a younger person is holding back. At a quite different level you might wish to move items in a kitchen or bathroom. You might also be aware of taking part in displacement activity rather than getting to grips with information you know you ought to study. With friends doing all they can to lure you from your lair, study-time could be limited. _

* * *

Even on his wilder days, hanging by his tails from a street lamp with a pair of binoculars clamped to his eyes was not his idea of a fun pastime. Of course, previous 'fun' pastimes he'd indulged in were leaping off cliffs in order to save Sonic from certain death whenever the hedgehog forgot about that weird little thing called 'physics', and trying to stay away from Amy when she was on a hammer rampage.

But, as needs must. There was something he needed to know, desperately, and obviously the only way he could find out was to peer inside Cream's bedroom with night-vision goggles. Obviously.

It had all started earlier in the month, when he tried to bake a cake.

Cooking, as he had been informed by the faintly maniacal TV chef-of-the-week, was essentially chemistry. You plop in a little bit of salt, a little bit of pepper, maybe a dash of polyphosphate if the devil was in you. Easy as one, two, three right?

No. Not right. Not right at all. The danger with cooking being like chemistry is that, well, Tails had rather a lot of chemicals. And he had curiosity. So, what about substituting salt with a pinch of something a little more..._exotic_? The result was a cake which, whilst looking fine, made him hallucinate. For five hours, he had thought his door was a puffer fish. Never again.

So, in a desperate bid to end his cup-ramen and raw spaghetti devouring ways, he had sought cookery classes from the only person he knew who could cook even in the vaguest sense of the word.

Cream.

She was a good teacher. This was not surprising, given that she was named after an ingredient, but even so, he learned quickly. She organised his cupboards, removing anything that was glowy or radioactive or that, most importantly, would not taste good if dumped in gumbo. When he presented her with his first dish and tentatively asked her to try it, she only had _one_ fit afterwards. Things were looking up.

But after three weeks of daily tuition and three trips to hospital, she'd said she couldn't teach him anymore. No one had seen her since that day, and she'd spent a lot of time in her house, refusing to see anyone ('anyone' being a synonym for Tails, or so Sonic gloated).

So, there he was, trying to find out what tragedy had befallen her and caused her seclusion. With high-powered binoculars. At ten o' clock at night. If nothing else, it would make for an interesting anecdote. But what he had failed to remember was that Cream's house was one of the most secure in the entire world, and that was because he'd done the security. Of course, he'd bypassed a lot of the external measures like the portcullis trigger and the DNA scanner, but a genius could hardly be expected to remember _all_ his great ideas in one sitting.

Of course, this meant that the cheerful pigeon which had just perched upon his street lamp was, in fact, a highly sophisticated robot defence mechanism. One that exploded.

After Cream and Vanilla had scraped him off the pavement and reassembled him in their kitchen chair, he felt a sensation of dread building in what remained of his lower intestine. Cream looked at him shiftily (or as close an approximation of shiftily as her cute features would allow) and said nothing. Deciding to revert to Knuckle's style of negotiations ("This is my head! I will hit you with it until you break or it does!") he came right out and asked her: "Why have you been so secretive lately?"

Cream blushed modestly, and, with a few moments delay, opened the fridge. Inside was a cake that make his teeth ache just looking at it. White frosting, sculpted icing-sugar roses, three tiers high and with a smell that could cause road accidents, it loomed above all other foodstuffs in the fridge like a towering, diabetes-inducing giant.

"You were doing so well at cooking, Tails, so I decided to make you a cake. I've been trying three weeks to get it just right. This is attempt number 28!" Cream said shyly.

He didn't say anything. He just drooled. Deep down inside, he marvelled at it. 28 attempts? He only ever bothered to repeat his experiments three times! Meanwhile, Vanilla bustled about, trying not to look overly proud of her daughter's amazing baking skills.

"One question, Cream. Why is it...uh...a wedding cake?" he said, pointing to the plastic bride and groom at the top. The groom was wearing a tux uncomfortably similar to the one he'd worn for one of Cream's birthday parties.

Vanilla started to interrupt, but Cream was, sadly, too quick.

"Mother says the only cake worth baking for a guy like you is a wedding cake," Cream replied innocently.

He looked at Cream, then he looked at her mother. Then back at Cream again. Then wondered how quickly he could sprint from the room. And if the price was a lifetime of chilli-dogs and soup in a mug, then that was a price he was willing to pay.


	12. Pisces

_Pisces_

_Plans for an extended trip (possibly a surprise) might necessitate a shopping trip - but which could be sabotaged by the need to meet up with someone before you go. You could be left waiting when rendezvous times are changed at the last minute. Growing concern for someone who's not at all well could result in lengthy conversations with friends who want to help and think you may have ideas. A variation on this theme could be discussing a work problem that desperately needs resolution._

* * *

A chunk of concrete, no bigger than Knuckles' brain, bounced off his left shoulder. He ignored it for the time being, and fanned his machine gun, with the aim of considerably improving the lead content of some Eggbots.

As usual, the attack had come as a complete surprise. He didn't know why he didn't just stick a tracker on Eggman- after all, he was a big enough target, and he only seemed to have one pair of clothes. However, his biggest regret was installing bluetooth into the Tornado III's dashboard. It's difficult to pilot a gigantic bipedal robot walker whilst Sonic prank calls you.

"Okay, okay. What is it?" he snapped into the microphone after punching a few after-market holes into the Eggbots.

"_Uh, Tails? I'm not gonna be much help this time. I'm kinda in prison," _Sonic's voice crackled.

"...What. You're kidding, right?" he replied in the very dullest of tones.

"_Hey, you don't get to be sad. I'm the one who's in danger of assault in here. And lemme tell ya, big scary inmates are worse than Eggbots. They're more resilient against homing attacks."_

"Why are you in prison? I'm defending the city all by myself and I have a handful of bullets to do it with!" he yelled.

"_Speeding's a crime. Who knew?" _Sonic replied. Tails knew it'd be accompanied by a shrug.

"What am I gonna do, Sonic?" he moaned.

"_Iunno. Either break out some super-genius kung-fu on the eggbots or break out some bail money, I guess."_

Tails ended the call. It didn't have the same immediacy as slamming the phone down, but such were the problems of bluetooth.

Eggman's Deluxe Egg Battle Cruiser rumbled into the sky overhead and began raining bombs on the south section of the city. This was a bad thing. And Tails only really had one plan of attack, which was to infiltrate the cruiser and wreck the engine. This would be exceedingly difficult, seeing as the only weapon he had any ammo for was the propeller punch. It was like Mike Tyson going up against the Death Star. On steroids.

Frantically, he racked his brains for a better plan. He had, of course, realised that the best plan was to get out of dodge, restock his ammo and come back, all guns blazing. But that would give Eggman free reign to blow up, kidnap or otherwise threaten hundreds of innocents- Cream, Vanilla and Amy among them. He hadn't seen Knuckles around to help, and as for Shadow, who knew? It was all down to him. The phone rang again.

"_Tails?"_

"Sonic, please tell me Knuckles has somehow got wind of this and is breaking you out of prison as we speak," Tails whined.

"_Nah, but I was thinking. Why don't you get out of the robot and do it yourself?"_

"What, without any of my inventions? Has prison food made you crazy?"

"_You never used to need them. I mean, you learned from the best, right?" _Sonic said cheekily.

Tails sighed and broke the call off again. Do it himself, without anyone to back him up? He'd only managed it a few times since he met Sonic and the others. He'd practically forgotten how. But Eggman's cruiser wasn't getting any closer, and the city wasn't getting any less bombed. With his jaw set, he initiated the plane transformation to get him up to that battleship.

Sometimes, you just had to fly with it.

* * *

_-Horoscope-_

* * *

Lights flashed, sirens flared and pants were soiled as all hell broke loose on Eggman's Battle Cruiser. It had come from nowhere- one moment, the peons were loading another set of bombs into the bay, and the next the wall had exploded and the ship was decompressing and there was orange death spinballing towards them at high speeds. If robots did not know fear before, they knew it now.

Tails hit the ground rolling, using a luckless Eggbot as an impromptu crash barrier. He arrested the force, shot into the air. At the top of his arc, he uncurled and dropped like a stone, swinging his tails with all his force. The head of his target popped off like a cork, sheared across the neck. Element of surprise wasting away with every second, he launched himself towards the next victim and struck out with a straight punch Knuckles would have been proud of. Adrenaline pulsed and he barely noticed the ache in his fist as the bolts flew. Concious of guns being focused in his direction, he ducked and retreated, making sure to get away from the hole he'd punched in the wall.

The robots now began to form up into the predictable rank and file that Eggman had programmed them to assume when under threat. It was a formation that Sonic usually made light work of with his homing attack. But Sonic wasn't there, and a barrage of gunfire is more of an issue when you don't move at supersonic speed. Quickly, he took to the air, flying low and fast over the robot's heads- too slowly, and a stray bullet tore loose a chunk of fur from his left tail. Diving, he turned hard right, corkscrewing for speed. He rolled when he hit the ground, and the sound of energy weapons being discharged over his head deafened him. He lashed out wildly with his tails and caught a peon in the knee joints, taking out the legs. He seized the body, robotic arms still flailing, and used it as a shield as he backed away- towards what? Anything, nothing.

The bombs.

It was a clever design feature that Eggman's robots would spontaneously explode after taking mortal damage to the core. It meant there was very little evidence and nothing left to track back to Eggman. It also meant that the bigger ones, like Chaos Gamma, were downright dangerous to take down.

Time seemed to move slower as he enacted his plan. He tipped backwards, still carrying the robot corpse, shots whizzing over his head. He coiled his tails like a spring, supported his weight on them. He pushed back further, rolling his head back as far as he could, so he could see the crates of missiles come into view. His feet left the ground, coming up to support the weight of the fallen egg peon, and then, when he was finally bent far enough backwards, when the angle was right, kicked out with as much force as he could muster-

Time came back into focus with a vengeance. Using the tension in his tails like a pogo-stick, he sprang forwards and away. Behind him, the peon careered gracefully into the bombs and detonated. He ran as the bombs exploded in sympathy, and the fireball soared out to lick his heels as he escaped. The smell of singed fur hit his nose, along with the heady scent of almost molten metal. He carried on running, running for dear life, as the sound of destruction reverberated throughout the whole airship.

* * *

_-Horoscope-_

* * *

Eventually, he stopped for breath, lungs aching and cold metal against his back. It was dark, dank, quiet, the sirens and the lights far away now.

"Hey, buddy. Brought me my bread and water?"

He almost jumped out of his skin. The voice was familiar, bored, and right behind his ear.

"Although, maybe after a couple weeks I'll get so thin I'll be able to just slip through the bars, huh?"

The cold metal behind him had been bars. The dankness had been what Eggman called 'hospitality'. And the voice?

"Come on. Aren't you pleased to see me?" Sonic grinned, smirking from Eggman's cell.

"...You said you were in jail. For speeding," Tails said slowly.

"I never said _where. _Now c'mon!"

"You sent me up here just to bust you out, didn't you?" he went on, all thoughts of robot patrols forgotten.

"Nah. I was actually pretty sure you'd take down the entire base yourself. You're crazy when you're mad. You breaking me out was just a bonus," the hedgehog said, shrugging.

"You're...Gah! Just handle the running and I'll do the rest," he sighed, looking for whatever mechanism opened the doors.

"Just like old times, huh? Now you're talking!" Sonic smirked, and began his pre-battle stretches.

* * *

_-Horoscope-_

* * *

He tightened the last bolt and groaned contentedly. His arms were so sore he thought they'd fall off. But he had to fix the Tornado after all the damage it had taken when he crashed it into Eggman's Battle Cruiser. In his defence, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Although, it had meant he'd had to fly under his own power, carrying Sonic, until they hit the ground. He'd be feeling that one for a few weeks.

The debris of the Egg Carrier littered the city, just as it had done to Station Square. There was almost an uncanny sense of deja vu, really, although in Eggman's defence, he couldn't be expected to think up of entirely original plots every two weeks. Sonic had actually remarked upon it when they fought, and Eggman obligingly promised to think of something better next time before his robot collapsed into a bunch of scrap parts. Another day, another ten thousand dollar robot ruined.

As it turned out, Vanilla, Cream and Amy had been out of time shopping, and weren't actually in any danger. That was good, he thought absently, wondering what to do about the paint. Every so often, he turned around and rubbed the tip of his tail self-consciously. Vanity, or perhaps a phantom ache from missing fur? He shrugged it away.

Life had returned to normal, or as normal as it had been before. Sonic refused to say how he'd been captured, although Amy eventually scared it out of him- apparently, he'd been sleeping on the airship when Eggman revved up the engines. Apparently he'd been completely caught out, and hadn't wanted to tell Tails to keep his heroic image. Actually, it didn't. The fact that Sonic had been managing to take down Eggman's bases- all by himself, usually- just meant he had more respect for the hedgehog. And yet...somehow, the thought that he'd broken into an Egg Cruiser, bereft of gadgets and weapons, relying only on his own speed and wit, meant something. Maybe he wasn't up to Sonic's level yet. But one day, he'd be able to handle the whole thing by himself.

He blipped the ignition of the plane, and opened the hangar doors. The sun was bright, the sky was blue and there weren't even _that_ many robot parts falling out of it. If he was gonna start flying, then now was definitely the time.


	13. Afterwords

_Horoscope: Afterwords_

* * *

Well, I started this a long, long time before I finished it, due to me being stalled and distracted halfway through. However, I've finally had opportunity to finish it, and I'm glad I did. The Sonic fandom was my first, and I've been pleased to finally make a tribute of it that has some semblence of writing skill.

I fully intend to do other Sonic fics soon, mainly because I finally got Sonic Colours and am delighted with it. They took the best bits of Unleashed, and then polished them. The scripting had improved to be genuinely funny (as opposed to Unleashed's somewhat stale physical comedy routine), and I appreciated the new voice actors as being less annoying than others who've appeared in the series. There's a real sense of speed, but also a sense that things are being taken back to basics. The gimmicks (Wisps and such) are usually optional; each level is designed well enough that you can usually just platform your way through. I had, up until that point, been disappointed with 3D Sonic games; however, I was pleasantly surprised, and if SEGA can follow it up with something of the same (or even better) quality, I think I could realistically count myself as an active Sonic fan again.

For now, however, I'm going to focus on contributing some good, quality stories to the fandom, and really work on my idea of the characters and how they can be fleshed out and made to seem more (or perhaps less?) real. It ought to be fun.

As always, I hope you've enjoyed these little bites. Until next time!


End file.
